The title of this post is the title of
this notable new paper
authored by Aaron Rappaport now available via SSRN. Here is its abstract:

For the past 40 years, policymakers have engaged in a debate over which institution should wield the principal power over punishment. Should courts and parole boards have the dominant role at sentencing, or should that power be left to legislatures and sentencing commissions? These debates are typically couched in policy terms, yet they also raise deeply philosophical questions, most notably: What is the morally justified sentencing system?

Perhaps surprisingly, criminal theorists have almost uniformly ignored this normative question, and that neglect has degraded the quality of the on-going institutional debates. This paper seeks to address that shortcoming by exploring the moral ramifications of design choices in the sentencing field. In particular, the paper identifies the institutional structure best suited for promoting utilitarianism, a widely-accepted moral theory of punishment.

Drawing insights from cognitive science and institutional analysis, the paper concludes that a properly structured sentencing commission is the institution best able to satisfy the moral theory’s demands. Beyond this policy prescription, the paper has a broader goal:To start a conversation about the link between moral theory and institutional design, and to encourage policymakers to explore more fully the premises of their own institutional choices in the criminal justice field.

On Friday, the Sixth Circuit handed down a notable new sentencing opinion in
US v. Fleming
, No. 17-3954 (6th Cir. June 29, 2018) (
available here
). The start of the opinion reviews its essentials:

Marcus Fleming was convicted of a cocaine offense, and the United States Sentencing Guidelines provided for a recommended sentence of 60 months’ imprisonment. At his sentencing hearing, the district court doubled that. It did so based in large part on a brief local news article that described a recent surge in drug overdose deaths, mostly due to powerful opioids like fentanyl. Neither this article, nor the underlying Ohio state report on which it was based, was provided to the parties before the start of the sentencing hearing. Nor was Fleming notified before the hearing that the district court planned to consider the article or the issues it addressed. Because this procedure denied Fleming a meaningful opportunity to comment on information that led to a substantial increase in his sentence, the resulting sentence was procedurally unreasonable.

Being selective about your clients puts you in a position of exclusivity. Exclusivity can mean a limited number of clients at any given time. But it can also be defined by your service offering, price, location, or even the technology that you use.

Regardless of how your freelance business defines exclusivity it does a couple of things instantly.

First, it allows you to be happy and enjoy working with the clients that you take on, as well as the projects. This helps you in being excited to get up each and everyday to
do good stuff
(thanks Joel!).

When freelancers aren’t excited to work with folks or work on a particular project it does bad things to our brains. We have the ability to shut off and go do other things, like watch tv, movies, surf, etc. We tend to procrastinate those things which we find “not fun.” But we are also procrastinating on other projects and the business itself. Both bad! Very Bad!

So when you are selective about your clients, you can do so simply by setting up a proper screening process. This can be as simple as a form on your website with several questions.

If the potential client does not follow the instructions precisely, that’s a red flag. If they don’t answer the questions in a way that suits the type of projects you want to work on, that’s a red flag. If there are red flags this early in the game, what will the project be like?

Second, being included or chosen is every human’s desire. Being selective, or exclusive, has a psychological effect on people to want what is “inside”.

Because a potential client wants to know what is on the inside, they are more likely to follow the process you lay out for them to become a client.

Now you are already showing that you have processes in place for your business. You are looked as an expert because you know what you are doing to give the benefits to your clients instead of just taking orders.

Freelancers work hard to get clients. Some freelancer work smarter to get clients. Only a few freelancers work as hard to keep clients.

You’ve heard before that it’s easier to sell to a current customer than a new one. If this is true (and it is true), then why do most freelancers stop the sales process once the lead becomes a client?

To stand out as a freelancer among the crowd focus on customer service as much as you focus on the sales process.

Once a lead becomes a client, the selling doesn’t stop.

Put them into an
onboarding sequence
. This can be a series of emails over the course of the first month of them being your client.

Setup regular calls to just see how everything is going with them.

Send them gifts around the holiday season or their birthday.

Small gestures to existing clients go a long way in building the relationship even stronger. Then when you are ready to add additional services, raise your rate, or create an entirely new product, they’ll be the first ones to sign up and stay onboard.

“I was personally there when he was taken away. I tried to ask what was the problem and I was rebuffed with their guns. I was threatened to be shot if I come any closer. Everybody was scared,” Angese recalled.

The allegations against him

Two days after his arrest, the SSS on 23 July 2016 released a statement alleging Jones is a militant named General Akotebe Darikoro, operating under the nom-de-guerre 'General Kill and Bury', the leader of the Joint Niger Delta Liberation Force, “which has been furthering separatist tendencies in connivance with other criminal gangs in the Niger Delta region”.

The SSS said Jones “confessed and owned up” to vandalising and bombing oil pipelines belonging to international oil companies Agip and Shell in early July 2016, sending threat messages to management of both oil companies demanding a total of N750m payment, threatening to launch missile attacks against the Presidential Villa and selected targets in Abuja, and masterminding the rumour in 2016 that the military was planning a coup against President Muhammadu Buhari.

Weekly Source, a local tabloid which operated by mostly sourcing and publishing critical stories of the government culled from online and national newspapers, had in its last edition dated 10 July 2016 published as its lead a story originally published by the online
pointblanknews
.
com
titled 'Rumble In The Military: Inside The Coup Plot Story... Militants' Warning Alters Plot'. The story elaborated an alleged conspiracy that top military officers working with politicians had approached the JNDLF militant group to intensify bombing pipelines as a justification to overthrow President Buhari. The military denied the allegations.

Weekly Source in the same edition published another story sourced from
pointblanknews
.
com
on how President Buhari's loyalists, including the director general of the SSS, were blocking investigations into an oil and gas company implicated by the anti-graft Economic and Financial Crimes Commission in syphoning billions of dollars in fraudulent oil deals. The story claimed that the company donated heavily towards President Buhari's 2015 presidential campaign through the loyalists.

Jackson Ude, the publisher of
pointblanknews
.
com
based in the U.S., in an interview in 2016, said he had received threats, from proxies of the SSS, asking him to pull down stories from his website which local based journalists like Jones were re-publishing in their newspapers and tabloids. He said he had been warned of possible arrest whenever he came to Nigeria.

Jones' family heads to court
Jones Abiri's sister

Jones' family heads to court

In August 2016, Jones family filed a fundamental rights enforcement lawsuit against the SSS asking the Bayelsa State High Court to declare Jones arrest and continued detention without trial unconstitutional, unlawful, illegal, null and void, and order the SSS to release Jones on bail, and direct the SSS to open Weekly Source newspaper's office.